


Dynamic Tension

by elegantanagram (Lir)



Series: HSWC 2014 Bonus Round Fills [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Age Difference, Bullying, F/M, First Meetings, Fitness Instructor Mom, POV Third Person, Teenage Bro, The 80s AU, Wordcount: 100-2.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-19
Updated: 2014-05-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 20:27:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1661375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lir/pseuds/elegantanagram
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"He's never been shy about hitting back when someone makes the choice to get physical first. Punching someone in the face who deserved it was never a point where he hesitated. But if he had more muscle, more bulk, if he got completely fucking ripped, maybe other people would think twice about punching him."</i>
</p><p>As a teenager, Bro Strider wasn't exactly the paragon of cool he purports himself to be as an adult. Getting there took a lot of sweat and hard work, and it started in a little fitness center in the 80s -- which also happened to be where Bro met Mom Lalonde.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dynamic Tension

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sunflowerwonder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflowerwonder/gifts).



> Written for the first bonus round of the 2014 [Homestuck Shipping World Cup.](http://hs-worldcup.dreamwidth.org/) The prompt was "Remember when Bro and Mom met in the 80s?" I took it to teenage!Bro, because I headcanon he'd have been a kid in the eighties, and because it allowed me to write awkward, scrawny teenager Bro, which is a thing that I love. 
> 
> (The title is a Rocky Horror Picture Show reference, and part of a line from the song "I'll Make you a Man.")

-

He skulks around the fitness center for a solid week before properly going inside. 

The place is right off the regular route he always takes home from the local high school, and the sidewalks are less cracked in the hoity-toity neighborhood he has to pass through to get to the center than anywhere he's used to being. He makes far better time on his skateboard with the detour, even accounting for the way he slows down on one particular block to stare in through that one particular set of huge front windows. 

Inside are miles and miles of tanned flesh – buff gym bunny guys pumping iron, toned housewife-types in their neon spandex and ankle-warmers. He's not being a creep, not really. He's just scoping the location, because any truly discerning customer looks into the product before seriously considering whether he's going to buy. 

A week after that, he strides right in, slaps his ID (it's a learner's permit, he knows it's a learner's permit) down on the front counter, and says he'd like to get in on a membership. 

He's a gangly thing, an equation of teenage gawkiness that's comprised of one part too-long limbs grown into too fast to two parts carelessness designed to cover up insecurity, the whole thing improperly balanced and not likely to be solved for another half a decade. He cares fuck all for what the jackasses at school think of his hobbies, but there's no two ways about it, _that Strider kid is a weird bird._ He knows it, the kids in his classes know it, and in the age-old tradition of adolescents they make no mistake letting him know they know about it.

He gets bullied, is the thing. He learned to let words roll off his back like water from oil, and he's never been shy about hitting back when someone makes the choice to get physical first. Punching someone in the face who deserved it was never a point where he hesitated. But if he had more muscle, more bulk, if he got completely fucking ripped, maybe other people would think twice about punching him. 

The paperwork for gym membership is a breeze, though he cringes at the price tag. It's going to put a hefty dent in his meager savings, and swiftly. He's absorbed enough in the intricacies of his personal information not to hear the person walking up behind him, which is a fucking first. She's catlike on her silent feet because he's absolutely never caught unawares by anything in his periphery. 

"Aw, honey, you're starting real early with this fitness thing, aren't'cha?" she says, looking him over from not two feet away. "I bet your daddy's real proud." 

He shrugs, not about to touch that hot-button issue with a ten-foot pole, and stares right back. She's white-toothed and fair-haired, smiling at him from under the wide neon-pink band keeping the smallest squiggles along her hairline from falling into her face. And damn, curves and legs for miles. Those are legs his classmates would kill to apply some division to. Maybe with the addition of their sweaty, unwashed dicks and the rapid subtraction of a whole hell of a lot of clothes. 

Maybe if he banged his physical trainer, that would buy him a whole assload of social status, and he wouldn't even have to bother getting the rest of the way ripped. God, he was not going to try and bang the fitness center staff, that was fucking insane, even for him. 

"It's never too early to start thinking about one's health," he jokes instead, striving his hardest not to be awkward. 

"Hell yeah!" she agrees. "That's the ticket. Want me to show you around the place? I give lessons, you know, for hours based on your membership level." 

"That's pretty cool," he decides. Nods a little. "Yeah, sure, gimme the grand tour." 

She offers him her arm, grinning again, the toned stretch of it bare up to the shoulder and her manner coming on like she's some cultured gentleman instead of an aerobics instructor. Or whatever the hell lessons it is she teaches, it's not like he wants to judge. He hooks his hand in at the crook of her elbow because fuck it, why not? Being on the arm of an absolutely smoking fitness instructor had to be at least half, maybe three-quarters, as good as having a hot older lady dangling from his own bicep. 

She was taller than him, even, holy shit, so it worked out. 

"I'm Roxy," she says, as she leads him past stair-climbers and treadmills and a big rack of free weights. She winks. "That's so you can schedule a lesson with me, if you wanna. What's your name, sugar?" 

He stumbles, though he's damn certain to keep that off his face. It's not that he wants her to think well of him, because since when does he give a fuck what anybody thinks about him? And it's really not that he's into her and wants to pretend at being somebody he's not just to impress her. It's just... Being the person he is at school every day is a hell of a drag, just an absolute slog of being looked right through, of no one seeming to see the world quite the way he did. 

If he has his way, sometimes he'd really like to be somebody else. 

"Bro," he says. "You can just call me Bro." 

"Uh huh," she says, arch and knowing like she has some things to say about believing him and about that not being a real name. She doesn't, though. They all remain captured behind her pretty pink lips. "Well come on, Bro, let's chat a little about what you want to get outta this place. I bet I can help you out." 

"Thanks," he says. It's simple, honest. He's quiet as he considers. "How about strength training? Do y'all have a program or somethin'?" 

"Honey, do we ever," she says, flipping her free hand down in a gesture that says it ain't no thang. "You wanna put a little bulk on? Impress when you flex?" 

She turns her arm up, demonstrating with a flex of her own and a little eyebrow waggle, and he pretends that the shape of her bicep doesn't stand a staggeringly good chance of being more impressive than his own. Okay, yeah, sure, this is definitely the lady he wants structuring when he pumps and when he squats. 

He wasn't going to admit it, but the grin comes to his face unbidden and then it's just so easy to agree. "Yeah, yeah that's what I was thinkin'." 

"I've got you covered," she promises. "With that cute face of yours, we'll turn you into a total Adonis in under six weeks, just you wait." 

And hell, Bro definitely likes the sound of that. 

-

-


End file.
